Tag Archives: price

Solving Western Water Shortages

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May 31, 2023 — A two-decade drought in the western United States, the worst in more than 1,000 years, has pushed chronic water shortages to a critical point, notwithstanding above-average precipitation this past winter.  Similar water shortages afflict Europe and some parts of Africa, Asia, Australia, and Latin America.

Forty million people in western US states get much of their water from the Colorado River. On May 22, their representatives reached a supposedly historic agreement to solve their conflicting claims for the time being.  California, Arizona and Nevada managed to negotiate how to allocate reductions of 14% by 2026, in water drawn from the river. read more

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The Rise and Fall of Cap-and-Trade

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Markets can fail.  But market mechanisms are often the best way for governments to address such failures.  This has been demonstrated in areas from air pollution to traffic congestion to spectrum allocation to cigarette consumption.    Markets for emission allowances – in which those firms that can cheaply cut pollution trade with those that cannot – achieve desired environmental goals at relatively low economic costs.   As of a decade ago, that long-standing economic proposition had become widely recognized and put into action. Yet the political tide on both sides of the Atlantic has been against “cap and trade” over the last five years. read more

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Combating Volatility in Agricultural Prices

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Under French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s leadership, the G-20 has made addressing food-price volatility a top priority this year, with member states’ agriculture ministers meeting recently in Paris to come up with solutions. The choice of priorities has turned out to be timely: world food prices reached a record high earlier in 2011, recalling a similar price spike in 2008.

 

Consumers are hurting worldwide, especially the poor, for whom food takes a major bite out of household budgets. Popular discontent over food prices has fueled political instability in some countries, most notably in Egypt and Tunisia. Even agricultural producers would prefer some price stability over the wild ups and downs of the last five years. read more

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